


The One With the Dogs Who Supervise Time

by NervousAsexual



Series: Star Trek Characters Travel Through Time to Punish The DrumpfTruck [2]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Anti-Donald Trump, Crack, Fix-It, Kinda, M/M, Post-Series, Spiced Peaches, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 15:35:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12609848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: In a world where Time Guardian Dogs can whisk you off to fix a past wrong in the blink of an eye, Spock and Bones are boldly going all the way back to that most hellish of years...2016.





	The One With the Dogs Who Supervise Time

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally published in [Spiced Peaches L: Fifty Shades of Peaches](https://spiced-peaches.livejournal.com/70582.html), which was the Fiftieth Issue Spectacular! The theme for issue 50 was alternate universes. Enjoy. :)

Spock prided himself on being a good caretaker. He had come a long way since Vulcan, since I-Chaya had...  
  
He'd spent years taking care of Jim, because some one had to stop the captain from ripping off his shirt and diving headfirst into every interstellar conflict they happened across. He had taken care of the Enterprise, as all the crew did, and more than once he'd taken care of the planet Earth. And now, on the very planet he'd saved a few times over, he was taking care of Leonard.  
  
Leonard would say often that he didn't need caretaking, that in fact Spock was worse than Nurse Chapel about fussing. Spock did not mention that Christine Chapel had, for a number of years now, been Dr Chapel. And the fact remained that neither of them was especially youthful. Leonard especially looked thinner and more frail every day.  
  
Today Spock had decided that Leonard needed to get out of the house and wheedled him into a walk through the park. He was getting more and more adept at making Leonard believe things were his idea.  
  
The park was asthetically nice, in a deciduous North-American kind of way. They stopped for a bit to admire the fountain, still spraying water wildly even this late in autumn. The path was crunchy with fallen leaves, most of them vibrant shades of orange and yellow.  
  
"Pretty," Leonard observed, with not much in the way of patience.  
  
"We can go where you please for lunch," Spock told him.  
  
"How 'bout home? I can go back to sitting at the window and yelling at the neighbors. For all we know, that neighbor cat is dumping in the backyard as we..."  
  
Suddenly Spock's caretaker sense tingled. He flung out an arm, which Leonard walked directly into but was too frail to move. They came to a halt.  
  
"What now?" Leonard demanded, but Spock shushed him.  
  
"A sehlat," he whispered.  
  
Leonard looked before them at the large fluffy animal on the sidewalk ahead of them. Huge crooked teeth jutted from its mouth. "Spock, that's a dog."  
  
"It is a sehlat. Stay very still, Leonard, they can sense fear."  
  
"Well, good for him. I'm not afraid." Leonard moved to one side, trying to side-step Spock's arm, and Spock grabbed him up in his arms, pinning Leonard's own arms to his sides.  
  
"This is for your own good, Leonard."  
  
"You let me go, now, or I'll..." Leonard thrashed and bumped his head against Spock's nose, but pain was nothing compared to Leonard being mauled by a sehlat. "Goddammit, man, it's a dog, not a sehlat!"  
  
"Borf," said the sehlat, which was not a very sehlat-like thing to say.  
  
But it was a very dog-like thing to say.  
  
Spock composed himself as best he could and set Leonard back down on the ground. "It does appear to be a dog."  
  
"You don't say." Leonard yanked his shirt straight and preened huffily.  
  
"I apologize. I was concerned for your safety."  
  
"Safety! Why would anyone bring a sehlat to Earth? As if there aren't enough animals that could murder a man on this planet."  
  
"Borf," said the dog again, and they looked back.  
  
"What are you, lost?" Leonard asked him. "Shoo. Go back to your family."  
  
The dog wagged its tail.  
  
"Wait." Leonard peered more closely at the dog. "You look like a..."  
  
"BORF," it said loudly, and the ground opened up and swallowed Spock and Leonard whole.  


* * *

They fell for what seemed like miles, one of them screaming and the other flailing and then trading roles. Spock had a terrible inkling that they were beginning to reach terminal velocity. He grabbed hold of Leonard and tried to wrap himself around. Maybe he could cushion the fall somewhat...  
  
And then they landed, in the exact spot they had begun.  
  
"What..." Spock began to say, but Leonard gave a horrified gasp and clutched Spock tightly.  
  
"Spock," he said. "Tell me you don't hear synth pop."  
  
Spock tilted his head to one side. "I do."  
  
"Tell me that person there isn't wearing cutoff jeans."  
  
Spock looked where Leonard was pointing. Some one with very fluffy hair was rushing about, and their legs were clad with super short cutoff jeans. "They are."  
  
Leonard wailed in frustration. "That was a time dog. We're in the 1980s again."  
  
"Let's not jump to conclusions."  
  
The person in cutoffs, who they could see was wearing bulky plastic framed glasses, rushed up to them.  
  
"They elected a fascist!" they cried.  
  
Leonard glared at Spock.  
  
"Which fascist, exactly?" Spock asked.  
  
The person in cutoffs went pale.  
  
"The Drumpf," they whispered, and fled.  
  
"You see?" Spock said. "We are not in the 80s. If this election is recent, we appear to have traveled to the year 2016."  
  
"That isn't better!"  
  
"Well, there is nothing for it." Spock composed himself as best he could with Leonard still wrapped around him. "We will have to find out what the time dog intended for us to do, and do it."  
  
Leonard was already walking away.  
  
"Where are you going? We don't know what we are meant to do."  
  
"It's the year 2016," Leonard called over his shoulder. "What do you think we're supposed to change?"  
  
The words of the cutoff owner returned to his mind. He hurried after. "Leonard, I think you are—what is the phrase? Jumping the gun? Surely the time dog understands that we aren't as young as we once were. Perhaps we're only meant to do something small.”  
  
“If you want to try somethin' else, try it.” Leonard marched onward, at a good strong clip considering his frailty. “I'm gonna shift the power balance of white nationalists in the early twenty-first century.”  
  
For once, Spock was speechless. How could Leonard be so flippant? He was an old man—much older than anyone alive in the year 2016—and the Drumpf, as he was called, was undoubtedly well defended. He watched as Leonard soldiered onward, as if he were a fighter with a phaser and not an elderly doctor with arthritis and a pocketful of pistachio shells.  
  
He thought of the white nationalist movement, of the violence that was perpetrated and the people who would be killed in the coming months and years.  
  
He had already seen Leonard die once. He would not see it happen again.  
  
Leonard walked as if he were unstoppable, through the park and across the street and over city and state lines. He walked as if he knew where he was going. He walked to what seemed to be a convention center of some sort, surrounded by a dense heaving crowd, and as they approached the doors swung open and who should walk out but the allegedly 45thpresident of the former United States. Something in Spock's chest tightened.  
  
“Leonard.”  
  
“Spock.”  
  
Leonard was already weaving through the assembled people. Spock grabbed him by the back of his shirt, and as Leonard turned to look at him he found his eyes were oddly itchy.  
  
“Spock,” Leonard said. His voice was softer than before.  
  
“I can't let you put yourself in danger.”  
  
Leonard gave him a smile, but even as he did he pulled a passerby off the sidewalk.  
  
“Hey,” he said to her, “what's your name?”  
  
The passerby stared at Leonard with wide eyes.  
  
“It's Nana,” she said, pulling her headphones down onto her neck.  
  
“Nana, darlin', would you mind watching my friend here? He's liable to get a little wound up when he sees the... ah... the leader.”  
  
“'Leader,'” Nana scoffed.  
  
“Precisely.” Leonard gestured to Spock, and Nana wrapped both arms around him. “Thank ya.”  
  
“No problem, D... uh, sir.”  
Leonard wrenched his shirt from Spock's fist and tugged it down straight. He smiled at them both, and returned to the crowd.  
  
“We can't let him,” Spock said. “Miss—that is, Nana—he's going to get himself hurt or worse.”  
  
“Why? What's he doing?”  
  
“I... I don't know.” He felt ashamed to even say it. “I don't know what he thinks he can do. He is only one man.”  
  
“One? But the needs of the many...”  
  
He thought he saw Leonard nearing the fascist yam who had assumed presidency.  
  
“Your oath,” he called desperately, because if Leonard wouldn't listen to him perhaps he would listen to Hippocrates. “Leonard, remember your oath!”  
  
“I don't think he can hear you.”  
  
Now he could see Leonard for sure, approaching the clown in chief. He was carrying nothing but his empty hands.  
  
“If there had been more of us...” Spock could feel the fear rising up in him now, and the tears with it. “If we'd been younger... There is nothing one man can do alone.”  
  
“But he's not alone,” Nana pointed out. “You're here with him.”  
  
As Leonard came up along DT he glanced back, and his eyes met Spock's and he smiled.  
  
“Do no harm,” he called over the crowd, “but take no shit.”  
  
And he punched the misshapen sweet potato in the eye.  
  
Spock tore himself free and plunged into the crowd. There were two sharp cracking noises, Secret Service pouring in from everywhere. He kept his eyes focused on Leonard. “That was your plan?” he wanted to shout. “Punch the man? What was that supposed to do?” But as he came up to Leonard, shoved aside the Secret Service agents swarming him, saw the oversized racist child bawling and wetting himself on the ground, saw the smile on Leonard's face, he couldn't bring himself to say it.  
  
He swept Leonard up into his arms and saw what looked like blood on the front of his shirt and tried to speak but only cried.  
  
“Worth it,” Leonard whispered.  
  
“No.” It wasn't time to let go yet. This wasn't why they'd come here. They had so much left to do together.  
  
Leonard smiled at him and hugged an arm around him. “So worth it.”  
  
It wasn't. It wasn't. But, he decided, as his eyes fell on the rotted sweet potato with executive power, he could make it closer.  
  
“He punched me,” the Troompaloompa was saying. “Why would he do that? I've never done anything to him.”  
  
“Shut up,” Spock said, and neck-pinched him just as the ground opened up and swallowed them again.  
  
This time they did not fall. They were surrounded by the flowing fabric of time. Spock let go of the dead weight he was carrying and fell to his knees, hugging Leonard all the closer.  
  
“It's okay,” Leonard said, his voice so soft he had to lean in to hear. “We did it.”  
  
He put his fingers against Leonard's cheek, and Leonard tried to take his hand in his own.  
  
“Borf,” said a strong, steady voice.  
  
The time dog.  
  
“This was your doing,” he said, turning to the golden sehlat-like dog that sat beside them. “You should have chosen some one else. This was a mistake.”  
  
The time dog looked at him with deep soulful brown eyes, and then it came forward and gently laid its head across Leonard's chest. When it pulled it away, the blood was gone and the skin unbroken.  
  
“Borf,” the time dog said, and wagged its tail.  
  
“Told you it'd be fine,” Leonard said, but Spock didn't respond, only hugged him as tightly as he could. He was not putting Leonard down. Not this time.  
  
“What about him?” Leonard asked of the time dog, pointing down to where the draft-dodger with the absurdly tiny hands was snoring loudly.  
  
If a dog could be said to shrug, the time dog did.  
  
“We didn't stop him,” Spock said. “We only slowed him down.”  
  
“No,” Leonard said slowly. “We moved him.”  
  
He looked down at him, confused.  
  
“What harm can he do here, trapped in time?”  
  
“Borf!” said the time dog. Its tail waggled wildly.  
  
“It's what the time dog wants,” Leonard said. “You wouldn't say no to a time dog, would you?”  
  
Spock looked down at where Leonard's wound had been, and then up at his smiling face. “I suppose not.”  
  
They both turned to the time dog, and the time dog turned to them.  
  
“See you later, good boy,” Leonard said.  
  
The time dog inclined his head and Spock thought he heard him say that “In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, all moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.”  
  
“What?” he asked, for surely he was hearing things.  
  
“Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,” the time dog seemed to say, “except in memory.”  
  
“I'm sorry,” Spock said to him. “It almost sounded like you said...”  
  
“BORF!” the time dog barked joyously, and they were falling once again through time.  
  
“Did... did you hear the time dog say something?” Spock asked.  
  
“Yes,” said Leonard. “He said 'borf.' Like he said before.”  
  
“That is not what I meant.”  
  
Leonard reached out a hand to trail through time. “We should do this again next year,” he said.  
  
“Leonard, that is the most illogical thing you have ever said to me.”  
  
Leonard gave him a crooked grin. “And?”  
  
Spock noticed with irritation a blush rising on his own face.  
  
“And I love you,” he admitted, and as time folded around them they kissed.


End file.
